The atmosphere in a room is contagious. Have you ever had the experience of walking into a room where something terrible just took place? Even if people try to hide it you can feel the negative vibrations in the air. The negative mood immediately catches on and you will start feeling bad.

You cannot help being influenced by the people you have around you. If they are very negative people you will become negative; if they are bad people you will become bad; if they are happy you will become happy. If you are around people that are generally not nice people you will become like them.

We tend to adapt the behaviour of the people we are around, and that is exactly why it is important for you to be around nice people. If you want to be a nice person you should socialize with nice people.

Simplify your life by discarding toxic people. Toxic people are the kind of people that are always negative; they seem to be able to complain about everything and sometimes it seems like their only mission in life is to find something to grumble and whine about. Do not spend time with these people; they will not contribute with anything positive to your life. They will drag you down until you become like them.

Today was a fantastic day for me until I went to work on my part time job. When I arrived the atmosphere was very bad and I found out that seven people had been dismissed and others had lost their positions and transferred to lower jobs. I could not help being influenced by this atmosphere and my fantastic day suddenly felt bad; I felt discouraged.

Giving is a fantastic principle! It is nice to give; it makes people happy and it usually generates something in return sooner or later. To give is such a simple thing to do and the first time I saw giving as a rule of life was in the book “The Go-Giver” by Bob Burg and John David Mann. I recommend reading that book although it is written for success in business the rules apply perfectly in your private life as well.

One of the rules is to give more value than people expect. E.g. if you are at work and go for a cup of coffee, then bring a cup of coffee for you colleague as well. He expects you to respect him and to cooperate at work, but by doing a little extra you give more value than he expects you to.

The good thing about receiving extra value is that it usually has a much greater value than if it was something that was expected from you. E.g. if your colleague asked you to bring him a cup of coffee, then the same cup of coffee would be appreciated but it would not have the same value.

The extra value that you add to the coffee actually comes from you. By wanting to be nice to your colleague you demonstrate that you like him as a person and that you would like to give him something. You show him your appreciation by bringing a cup of coffee unasked and thereby add greater value to this cup of coffee.

You can practise giving more than expected anywhere and in every aspect of your life. The minute you start giving greater value it will feel like the whole world has changed to the better. I promise you that you will feel a radical change almost instantly.

Some of the nicest people I know show genuine interest in how I am doing. They do not solve my problems but the do listen to me because they are interested and want good things to happen to me. They give the most valuable thing that anyone can give; they give themselves.

They give themselves by listening to you; they listen and understand and they make you realise what to do about the problem that is nagging you. Thus, if you want to be nice to people then start a conversation by asking how they are doing and then listen! Do not start talking about yourself, just listen and keep asking. At some point people will feel comfortable and start asking you.

I have listed a few things of what you can do to become better at listening and showing interest.

Eye contact: Look into the eyes of the person you listen to. If you let yourself distract and look elsewhere it will look like you do not care and that you have no interest in what is being told. By keeping eye contact you demonstrate that nothing is more important at that moment and that you are present and ready to listen and understand; that is genuine interest.

Communicate understanding: Show that you are listening by nodding and using confirming sounds and words. By doing this the person will become more open and talk more because you are showing interest.

Body language: Show your hands; and by that I mean you should keep you hands visible because if you cross you arms or stick your hands in you pockets then you will communicate mistrust and lack of interest. One of the best ways to gain the speakers trust is by copying the speaker’s body language. Unconsciously people copy each other’s body language when they feel comfortable together and you can use that knowledge to show interest.

Respond to what is being said. If the speaker tells you something shocking then look shocked and if the speaker gives good news then look happy and smile.

Would you like to look good? People look better when they smile and smiling will make people smile back. Smiling has a lot of advantages and it makes you look good to other people. They would think of you as a good and nice person; you would look like the kind of person people want to spend time with.

We all prefer to be around people who smile because they make us feel good about ourselves. If you feel good about yourself you feel motivated; you feel more energetic and you can see the purpose of life. You get a smile by giving a smile. If I feel down I like to go and collect smiles. I do that by taking a walk downtown and then I try to spot friendly people, catch their eyes and smile. I do not make a big smile but a small one just enough to recognise the other persons presence and that person will usually smile back.

A few years ago I was standing at a heavily trafficked place close to the railway station. A girl was approaching me riding a bike; I gave her a big smile right before she passed me. That smile almost killed her because she quickly turned her head, not smiling, but with this wondering look saying – who was he? My smile took all her attention from traffic and she steered right in front of a car. She managed to avoid being hit by the car but that day I learned the real power of smiling.

When you smile people will seem friendlier because they regard you as being friendly and that makes them feel safe. Their first impression of you would be that you seem like a nice person; and that is exactly what you want to.

There are many different ways to smile and you only need to do a small effort to get great results, so start smiling to everybody no matter how you feel inside. It will make them feel good and they will make you feel good.